Accused of benefit fraud!!

clearingout

I accept the relationship can be examined. What I don't accept is that someone is necessarily 'wrong' for maintaining their own property/home whilst spending perhaps the majority of their time in another home prior to making a commitment to that person. What I don't accept is that someone who doesn't know me is allowed to tell me that my relationship is committed when the person I am in a relationship with and myself have not yet decided we are committed, despite the fact that we are spending a lot of time together. I maintained a home for a long time whilst sleeping very regularly with my boyfriend (later my husband) because as far as I was concerned, I was not in a committed relationship. If asked during those years, I'd have probably told you that I believed the relationship a long-term one to which I wanted to commit but we were still some time off making that commitment.
(!!!!!)

sooooo many things could have happened to split us up during that time. Had we been forced to live together before we were ready, who knows what would have happened? I'm a cynic, I've had a 'perfect' relationship go horribly, horribly wrong. I am now going to be very cautious about future relationships. I struggle to understand why I should be pressured into making an early commitment in a future relationship based on the fact I claim tax credit to help support children which are 100% my responsibility 'cos my ex makes no contribution. I am not entering a new relationship lightly. I am mindful of the impact multiple relationships could have on my children. Why should I also be forced to worry about how many nights I sneak a boyfriend past my children (LOL!) because it may also be construed as fraud?!!

I know, I know...'cos I signed up for tax credits. Ho hum....

FBaby

clearingout wrote: »

I said earlier that if couples are forced to commit too early, women run the risk of multiple pregnancies by multiple men and thus run the risk of a deeper reliance on benefits. Allowing people to take their time and define their relationships in their own way will help prevent this. I get that people will abuse the system. But I think our society is such that eventually, there is pressure to commit as a family or leave it. I don't think live-out, serious relationships last forever.

Claiming that is better for existing children to take time to commit to a relationship is just an excuse in my eyes. If you spend as much time with your partner as the OP does, therefore inevitably encouraging a relationship between that person and your children to grow, they will be as affected if that person were to disappear from their lives, whether said person went back to their place to sleep for a few hours a couple of times a week or whether they are officially living there...

As for associating couple moving together 'early' and the risk of more children being born and ending up in a single family again, I don't get it at all.... why should moving in with someone officially rather than unofficially correlates with a higher chance of a pregnancy? Deciding to have a child together is certainly much more of a commitment than moving in together. If anything, it is better to be 'forced' to move in together and see whether this leads to the level of commitment that would support having children together, rather than taking more time to get to know each other separately, to then rush everything and realise that it isn't working...but another child has been born...

I am of course not talking about weeks or even months, but surely after 18 months, you should start getting quite a good idea of where you stand, and if not moving in together right there and then, you would start thinking about it and planning it.

clearingout

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

Apologies for repeating myself but if you want someone or something to pay you money then you have to conform to their rules and if they define your relationship in a certain way then that's the relevant definition and not yours.

and repeating myself...do I not have a right to define my own relationships?!!! I know, I don't because I sign up to tax credits but the impact of having to make early decisions on relationships is something I suspect which keeps many women tied to the benefit system as single mothers.

seven-day-weekend

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

Although I take some of your points, I don't think it's that normal for someone to pay separate rent for accommodation they only sleep in for one or two nights a week.

For the rest, without wanting to be cliched, "he who pays the piper calls the tune" and if people want to claim money from the public purse they need to conform to the rules laid down for doing so.

Pay your own way and you can choose whatever living arrangements you like, as long as you don't scare the horses!

(sorry, don't quite know why I've quoted ONW, although I do agree with her!).

I lived with my parents until I got married and so did my husband, but that was 40 years ago, things are different now.

Why is it compulsory for anyone to 'stay over'? Even an old age pensioner like me knows that tyou can have a sexual relationship without having someone spend the entire night with you! ( and jeopardising the Benefits in the process). And if, as the OP says, they are not your partner and you are not LTAHAW, then there should be no problem kicking them out at midnight and them going home.

Seems simple to me.

duchy

Seems to me as society is now accepting of sex between consenting adults not implying a relationship of significance the state needs to use other benchmarks -and the rules the DWP work to are in need of properly revising to define this (or maybe they don't want to define them as this wooliness gives them more leeway to make decisions).

Quite honestly if a couple are spending the majority of their non working hours together and things like food are bought jointly in the main then I can see how that defines coupledom rather than two adults also keeping seperate households who buy their own food in the main and spend time visiting both homes. (Foe me the OP is in a live in relationship as her boyfriend is staying all available nights (eg when he isn't working nights) and the majority of his free time. If he's selfish enough not to be buying the food he consumes there or contribute to utility bills that's another matter -it would seem reasonable to the DWP that someone spending that amount of time there would be contributing so will assume they do. I suspect that if the couple had accomadation that was on a par it might be different but when one is paying rent on just a room -which is likely to be less than the benefits paid to the single mother that probably raises a flag too.

The use of the word partner really just confuses the matter as some people use it to describe the person they are currently seeing regardless of length or commitment to relationship -whereas to others it's seen as someone they have a committed and (hopefully) permanent relationship partnership with.

Really the whole system needs an overhaul but if you need to claim under the current rules you need to be aware of how your relationship can and will be viewed by DWP.

clearingout

FBaby wrote: »

why should moving in with someone officially rather than unofficially correlates with a higher chance of a pregnancy? Deciding to have a child together is certainly much more of a commitment than moving in together. If anything, it is better to be 'forced' to move in together and see whether this leads to the level of commitment that would support having children together, rather than taking more time to get to know each other separately, to then rush everything and realise that it isn't working...but another child has been born...

I can only go on my own experience....prior to marriage, I was scrupulous about contraception. No way would I have risked a pregnancy with someone I wasn't committed to (although I accept it can happen, regardless). I had a number of sexual partners in my early 20s prior to meeting my husband as I suspect many of my contemporaries did and younger people continue to do so.

After marriage, once agreed that we wanted children but hadn't quite got round to saying 'yes, we're actively trying', I was far less scrupulous about contraception, and so was my husband. Our third child was certainly the result of carelessness and we regularly had sex without using condoms (chosen method of contraception as we hadn't finished our family and so didn't use a more permanent method and as I was an older mum, we didn't resume using the Pill in case there was a delay in return to fertility) between child one and two and two and three.

I think 'moving in together' and 'making a commitment' puts people in a place of security. If the move is forced due to benefit issues, that security may well be precarious or even false. Based on my experience, that would put a woman at risk of pregnancy. I accept that's my experience and others maybe far more careful than I was!

FBaby

clearingout, I really don't think people are penalised just on the basis of them living separately after 18 months together. I suspect they take a lot more into consideration, hence investigation being so lenghtly. I remember watching that programme a couple of years ago about the DWP 'catching' benefit fraud on the basis of people claiming not to be together, and what it involved in terms of gathering evidence was quite staggering.

I would think that the circumstances of the claimed residence has quite a lot to do with it on its own. Say you have one man in his 30s, working full-time and earning a decent salary, but choosing to rent a poxy room in a shared house, paying a very low monthly rent including all bills and then spending most of his time at his partner would be looked at very differently to the same man living in a flat/house paying quite a lot every month. I don't think the role of the DWP investigation is to make a judgment as to whether the couple have reached a level of commitment that justify them officially moving in together to save tax payers, but to ascertain whether their might be an calculated avoidance of such action purely on the basis of the financial gain of the single parent staying on benefits.

clearingout

yeah, it's probably more complex than I am perceiving. It worries me, however. And based on the discussion here, clearly much margin for error, particularly as it is a human decision and some 'facts' are very much open to interpretation.

I came up against this with my divorce, actually. My ex was living with his partner, to all intents and purposes. She was referred to as 'partner' never 'girlfriend' in all legal documentation. She spent every night at my ex's home. She kept her own house - which was a local authority owned property. Presumably, she continued to pay bills etc. on it. Anyone I spoke to disagreed if I mentioned that he said they weren't living together - including our childminder's husband who had attended the home to give a quote to convert the garage to a further bedroom for her older child (16 so not living independently but living with dad most of the time). And he got away with the 'we are not co-habiting, we have are own homes' card played in court. Grrrrrr!!!

FBaby

clearingout wrote: »

I think 'moving in together' and 'making a commitment' puts people in a place of security. If the move is forced due to benefit issues, that security may well be precarious or even false. Based on my experience, that would put a woman at risk of pregnancy. I accept that's my experience and others maybe far more careful than I was!

I see it totally the other way around I see it that having to separate places provides a sense of confort in the relationship that could lead to people thinking that they could have a baby together (at least shortly after they move in together) whereas if they allowed themselves more time officially living together, they might see that things are not as rosy as they appeared when they were not faced with sharing everything that might make them more careful about sharing a child together. Ironically, I think one key factor that break relationship after they move in together when all was perfect before is finances. It is amazing how it can change the dynamic of a relationship and test commitment. I've actually become more reserved about having a child with my partner after I moved in with him, nothing to do with commitment, but realisation of how hard it would be all around, something that I couldn't see so well when we didn't share everything together yet.

Sixer

FBaby wrote: »

I really don't think people are penalised just on the basis of them living separately after 18 months together. I suspect they take a lot more into consideration, hence investigation being so lenghtly. I remember watching that programme a couple of years ago about the DWP 'catching' benefit fraud on the basis of people claiming not to be together, and what it involved in terms of gathering evidence was quite staggering.

This is really what I was getting at in my question to Uganda.

When DWP investigate for LTAHAW, they need concrete evidence to prove this. Evidence they use includes things like official registrations of address (electoral roll, car insurance), financial involvement (the name on utility bills, internet subscriptions, Sky subscriptions), and physical evidence gained from the home itself (dedicated clothes cupboards and drawers, personal toiletries in the bathroom, even Christmas cards addressed to the couple, rather than to one or other of them).

Since these are the types of evidence used in court, surely a workable defence cannot simply be "we have two addresses"?

Equally, a couple could spend 7 nights a week sleeping at each other's houses but need not be LTAHAW. If they maintain separate official registrations, don't contribute financially to one another, and keep personal effects at "their own place" then then are not in a mutually supportive relationship in the eyes of the DWP.

I get that there are grey areas, but this principle seems simple enough to me.